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Astronomers discover the most ‘pristine’ star in the known universe Phys.org
Brains of Stranded Dolphins Showed Signs of Alzheimer’s Disease Science Alert
Gold nanoparticle nasal spray delivers lithium safely to brain without harming kidneys Interesting Engineering
Gold takes a breather after safe-haven demand fuels record run Channel News Asia
Climate/Environment
New Zealand oceans warming 34% faster than global average, putting homes and industry at risk, report finds The Guardian. “Sea levels that reach that height mean that a coastal storm that used to happen every 100 years could start happening every year.”
Uber driver charged in connection with starting the Palisades Fire LAist
Pandemics
More measles cases confirmed in South Carolina, Michigan as US total climbs to 1,563 CIDRAP
China?
China tightens rare earth export curbs, taking aim at military and chip applications CNN
China Accelerates Oil Reserve Site Build Amid Stockpiling Drive Reuters
10 pct of GDP defense spending demand from US disregards livelihoods of Taiwan residents Global Times
India
Exclusive: Traders seek yuan payment from Indian state buyers of Russian oil, sources say Reuters
South of the Border
Report: Trump Administration Working on Strategy To ‘Eliminate’ Venezuela’s Maduro Antiwar
Colombian president says US military struck Colombian boat, killed his citizens ABC News
Colombia: President Petro Denounces ‘Political Coup’ Following Suspension of Electoral Consultation (+Cepeda) Orinoco Tribune
GOP senators sink measure to halt Trump’s strikes on alleged drug boats The Hill
Delay in US financial support for Argentina rattles markets El Pais
Syraqistan
Hamas and Palestinian Factions Agree to Gaza Ceasefire; Trump Confirms Deal Was Reached Drop Site
Netanyahu Government Set to Approve Israel-Hamas Deal in Gaza: Here’s What Happens Next Haaretz
Israel’s Ben-Gvir storms Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, calls for ‘Gaza victory’ Al Arabiya
Marco Rubio to join Paris conference on Gaza ‘post-war’ plans The Cradle
Israel military intercepts another Gaza-bound aid flotilla New Arab
Genocide two years on: It is the West, not Gaza, that must be deradicalised Jonathan Cook
Palestinians are merely a canary in a coal mine; the early warning of the latent ugliness, psychopathy & pure evil of your political/media class & what they’ll do to you
When you see them relishing in the mass murder of our children, do you think they’re gonna care about yours?
— Muhammad Shehada (@muhammadshehad2) October 7, 2025
A Philadelphia company’s obscured support for killing Palestinians with autonomous flying bombs All-Source Intelligence
Over 50,000 children under five suffering acute malnutrition in Gaza Middle East Eye
UN says 83% of Gaza City structures damaged amid Israeli attacks Anadolu Agency
European Disunion
German industrial output falls to 2005 levels as auto sector craters FT
Von der Leyen hopes her caring, sharing side will win round critics Politico
France’s Le Pen vows to block any government AFP
Europe’s Walls Tremble as Political Crises Multiply Simplicius
And the urgent request comes on top of a $1 billion extra cost to Spanish customers as the grid operator is running the system in what it calls a “strengthened mode” since April 29 (effectively, running gas-fired power stations harder and curtailing solar and wind)
— Javier Blas (@JavierBlas) October 8, 2025
New Not-So-Cold War
Russia, Speaking With One Voice, Warns Trump and NATO Larry Johnson
Ukraine war briefing: Analysts flag Kremlin scare campaign against use of Tomahawks The Guardian. Problematic framing.
Tomahawk for Ukraine: Never-ending Saga of the Wunderwaffe to Turn the Tide Black Mountain Analysis
Ukrainian Media About Gaps In The Frontline And Other Failures Moon of Alabama
ELECTRIC WAR ON THE UKRAINE BATTLEFIELD IS TURNING THE LIGHTS ON IN THE KREMLIN John Helmer
Russia named top security threat in Moldova’s military strategy TASS
Trump 2.0
Stephen Miller says Trump has ‘plenary authority’ over military. What does that mean? USA Today
Urgent: ICE is Lying to the American Public Aaron Parnas
The Chicago Rubicon and What Comes Next The Bulwark
Trump administration officials seriously discussing invoking Insurrection Act, sources say NBC News
My gosh. After the US bombed multiple boats in the middle of the ocean, murdering people on grounds that they were allegedly “carrying drugs,” the US Attorney General says “Just like we did with cartels, we’re going to take the same approach…with Antifa.”pic.twitter.com/IS0rSjBhrx
— Prem Thakker (@prem_thakker) October 8, 2025
Pete Hegseth’s Crypto History The Nation
Weimar Republic
Gov. Pritzker responds to Trump threat to jail him, mayor over ICE: ‘Come and get me’ Chicago Sun-Times
Police State Watch
Secretive Watchlisting Center Executing NSPM-7 Ken Klippenstein
ICE closes detention oversight group in shutdown despite surge in detainees WaPo
ICE just coldly shot an unarmed PRIEST in the head w a pepper ball when he (and everyone around him) clearly posed no threat. Source: John Pfaff pic.twitter.com/isy1Flgl6F
— TheSidewalkSchool (@SidewalkSchool) October 8, 2025
Anatomy of a Beating – The UCLA Palestine Solidarity Encampment TRT World (Video). In-depth breakdown of seminal moment when police declared Zionist allegiances. In retrospect, a harbinger of what was to come.
Abortion
‘Full of Sh*t’ Texas Cops Lied About Why They Used AI Surveillance to Track Woman Who Had Abortion Common Dreams
Immigration
“Why Sergio?”: Deportation ends 36-year dream for celebrated Waco chef Texas Tribune. Guy even visited W’s ranch.
Why the Decline in the Foreign-Born in the Monthly Household Survey in 2025 Is Very Likely Real Center for Immigration Studies. Source background.
Groves of Academe
These Activists Want to Dismantle Public Schools. Now They Run the Education Department. ProPublica
Our Famously Free Press
In 2 Years of Gaza Genocide, Sunday Shows on NBC, ABC and CNN Have Not Featured a Single Palestinian Guest In These Times
The Friendly Skies
Air Traffic Controllers Were Already Stretched Thin. Then Came the Shutdown. NOTUS
Big Brother Is Watching You Watch
Thanks for the question. The Israeli government is “geofencing” the physical boundaries of more than 500 churches during worship times in order to deliver “targeted pro-Israel content” on devices.
If you are concerned about this, here is what you can do:
1) See if your church… https://t.co/Cfxgzucsqq
— Nick Cleveland-Stout (@nick_clevelands) October 8, 2025
Healthcare?
Medicaid Expansion Linked to Better Cancer Survival at 5 Years MedPage Today
Imperial Collapse Watch
I was studying other times in history when gold prices more than doubled in the reserve currency of the time, as they did in the past year: it’s rare and almost always a sign of a profound loss of confidence in the existing monetary and political order, going all the way back to… https://t.co/M3reToeQ1d
— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) October 7, 2025
Gold as ‘debasement trade’ doesn’t add up FT
UN to cut 25% of global peacekeeping force amid US funding shortfall Euronews
Nothing Left Inside Novum Newsletter
In a Private Park in North Carolina, Confederate Statues Are Rising Again New York Times (resilc)
Political Symbols and Social Order: Confederate Monuments and Performative Violence in the Post-Reconstruction U.S. South American Political Science Review. Commentary:
This new @apsrjournal article is sure to cause a stir.
It provides evidence that historical confederate monuments in the south actually reduced violence against black people.
Why?
The author argues that confederate monuments “act[ed] as a substitute for performative violence… pic.twitter.com/0NeHLYKJ6Q
— John B. Holbein (@JohnHolbein1) October 8, 2025
AI
Uber Driver Who Allegedly Caused the Palisades Fire Used ChatGPT to Imagine a Forest Burning Gizmodo
Generative AI’s Impending Death By A Thousand Rake-Smacks What We Lost
Economy
OpenAI, Nvidia Fuel $1 Trillion AI Market With Web of Circular Deals Bloomberg. This is what now accounts for 40 percent of GDP growth:
With each passing day, the AI space looks more and more like home mortgage securitization at the peak of the housing bubble with its overlapping series of capital conveyor belts. pic.twitter.com/ar9NiVUaXp
— Peter Atwater (@Peter_Atwater) October 8, 2025
Mr. Market
AI Is the Market, and the Market Is the Government Kyla Scanlon
Class Warfare
For older Americans, the cost of poverty is 9 years of life, study finds CBS News
This Ain’t Your Grandad’s Rural America Hickman’s Hinterlands
Antidote du jour (via):

See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.


“Von der Leyen hopes her caring, sharing side will win round critics”
Had to check and yes, it is a Politico article. I was actually expecting it to be The Onion or the Babylon Bee instead.
‘Vee haf tools to make you to make you like us!’
The woman is deranged. Sensible men spend years building up a powerful trading bloc and the Atlanticist Russophobes turn it into the failing Fourth Reich, and the bloody woman and her fellow chucklehead conspirators with Nazis glistering on their family trees decide to go to war with Russia asap. Bismarck must be turning in his grave from laughing at the amoeba who now govern what’s left of Europe before the rest falls to the bottomless ocean of contempt their own people, let alone the other peoples of the world, feel for for them.
There is the saying that when woman finally gets to the top of some organization, it’s only because all the power hungry men with big egos sensed it’s going to implode in short time and decided to try their luck elsewhere.
Seen it happen a few times.
Next up, C of E?
Germany’s cunning plan is to attach Bismarck to a generator, for infinite energy.
All you need to know about von der Leyen is that she has engaged in a years long war on endangered wolves because the improperly secured family pony got killed by them.
She has been failing up harder than anyone since George W. Bush.
Not sure what to think of this piece. Couldn’t debasement be one of the factors driving gold prices up? Maybe not even the principal one, but still. Bond prices could be horizontal for a variety of different factors that “annul” or “overcome” the debasement pressure. That said, I personally think the gold rally is simple liquidity preference and the dollar isn’t looking to be as trustworthy as it used to be. Who knows what the government will do? Maybe people want to have a plan B.
I see gold as a perch to ride out the compounding insanities of AI, insurrection (by Trump), and genocide.
All these things will end, but they can keep going longer than one might stay solvent!
Yes, a generic Plan B for a smorgasbord of stupid.
There is a gold debasement trade as illustrated by the, In Gold We Trust report, gold has appreciated at an average annual rate of ~ 8% for decades, The recent more rapid rise is likely due to the basil 3 rules allowing gold to be used as a tier one asset, thus pristine collateral, which is in high demand since the big banks became more discerning after getting burned in the 2008 debacle, as well as China buying both in order to set up gold exchanges around the east to allow for currency exchange without using the dollar as an intermediary as well as encouraging its population to invest in gold. It doesn’t look like there is much retail buying of gold in the west except for some big players. They probably have insight into someone who has rehypothecated gold collateral and is going to be caught short, though they may be just playing the momentum.
With the site admins forbearance:
Got an e-mail from the largest local Hospital/Clinic group stating that next year they would be “out of network” for the United Healthcare Medicare Advantage Plan. This means higher co-pays and general costs for those using the United Plan than traditional Medicare. This is a “retirement destination” region. Could that be the reason for this?
Don’t know why we got this missive. We are on Traditional Medicare.
See:
Attention United Healthcare members on Medicare Advantage plans. Effective January 1, Hattiesburg Clinic will no longer be in network with them. This will mean you either can no longer use the plan at all (HMO plan) or pay substantially more out of pocket (PPO plans).
The Annual Enrollment period begins next Wednesday, October 15.
Sign of the times.
Privatize the profits. Socialize the losses.
If on Medicare, check out what is likely to happen to your Advantage plan, especially the dental component. What was once standard may be excluded in 2026. :(
Good to show the failings of MA. The more people hear about these take-aways the more likely they will drop MA. There are 1 million less MA subscribers than last year. So a trend may be occurring. Also, MA premiums are set to skyrocket along with other health insurance premiums. We stick to regular Medicare with a high deductible supplemental policy.
I would not be surprised if next year the ability to go from MA to M gets killed. The uniparty hates M.
“Russia, Speaking With One Voice, Warns Trump and NATO”
I think that by now the Russians have written off Trump as somebody that they can negotiate with. He has fully aligned himself with the Neocons and is still trying to find a way to pressure Russia into negotiations where they lose the peace. The Russians have recently said that any momentum achieved through the Alaska meeting is now gone which is bad. But Russia is now telling Trump that if they “give” Tomahawks to the Ukrainians, then Russian-American relations are now gone. They know that it would be actually the US firing those Tomahawks into Russia but I think that there is a threat to Trump here. That if the US fires Tomahawks into Russia then Trump can forget all those lucrative deals that Russia was suggesting to him such as oil, gas, Arctic resources and all the rest of it. All g-o-n-e gone. And that is something that would grab Trump’s attention because you are talking big money here.
That wasn’t evident in Putin’s scandalous appearance in Valdai, where he debased himself more than Yeltsin ever did. We have not heard anything since then to overturn what he said — yes, Ryabkov made some more aggressive statements yesterday, but Ryabkov has been making them for a long time, while the Kremlin has been doing, well… you saw it last week.
At least back in the 1990s the US was not killing people in Russia directly and was not destroying the power grid in multiple Russian regions with its with its GMLRS systems, which is exactly what was happening right as Putin was slobbering all over Trump in one of his main annual public events.
Also, it was extremely inappropriate to talk about Charlie Kirk while never mentioning the many thousands of Russian directly killed by the US over the last three years. WTF???
It was also very revealing about Putin’s Russia — to embrace a right wing lunatic like Charlie Kirk. And very telling about why the war is going the way it is.
This is a rerun of the GPW, but Putin steadfastly refuses to fight it. And he refuses to fight it because in order to fight it he has to acknowledge that it is a rerun of the GPW, but if he associates it with the GPW, then automatically it follows that the country will gravitate back towards its condition from that time. Can’t have that — it means exposing the moral, intellectual and geopolitical bankruptcy of the post-1991 regime, and after all Putin is there to safeguard that regime, not to return to what was pre-1991.
The problem is, if he doesn’t do the latter, the country is doomed. And yet what did he do? He doubled down on ideologically embracing the exact opposite, and in the form of a key figure in the enemy camp no less…
You have not been paying attention. Putin walked that back in an interview shortly thereafter, IIRC with Pavel Zarubin. Also the Deputy Foreign Minister has just said that the Alaska process was as failure and none of the attempts to normalize relations have gone anywhere.
He pays attention only to things that fuel his visceral hate towads Vladimir Vladimirovich.
You know, if Vladimir Vladimirovich actually did his job and defended the country instead of serving the interests of his oligarch masters, then maybe there would have been no reason to hate him.
Just a thought…
Whether he is doing his job, or not, is nobody’s business but Russians. Westerners hating on Putin just adds bonus points to his score. Maybe you should refocus your immense wisdom/hate towards fixing your own shithole country. Just a thought…
People in the West, especially the USAians, are always making fun of other countries’ failures and debackles while ignoring their own.
1) Putin didn’t really walk that back, I did see the Zarubin interview
2) The damage was already done — one was a very public appearance, the other was a random interview on the sidelines
3) As I clearly stated in the original post, Ryabkov has his mind in the right place, but little depends on him
4) Even what he said but if it was to come from Putin is not sufficient — what is needed right now is for Putin to come out publicly and say “if you send a single long-range missile towards us such and such targets will receive this many kilotons immediately”, and they better be painful targets. And they better indeed receive those kilotons when the other side tries to call the bluff, which it will.
I don’t remember who it was but a couple of days ago he mentioned that the Russians are listening to both public communication and communication through very non-publich channels. I would be surprised if the Russians are not also communicating in public channels and very non-public channels. In the private channels maybe the messages are more straight-forward?
It really doesn’t matter much if they made threats to the US through backchannels:
First, empirically that hasn’t made any difference because the US keeps escalating
Second, if you communicate in such a way non-publicly while showing yourself in public to a spineless weakling, you lose deterrence regardless.
And the loss of deterrence is the biggest problem for Russia right now. The precedents have been established that anyone can fire whatever they want into Russia and there will be no response. Which only invites more and from an ever expanding circles of participants.
Who has fired into Russia directly so far?
1) Ukraine (obviously, with everything they have)
2) The US, through Ukraine (HIMARS, ATACMS, artillery, drones, heavy armor, soldiers taking part of the battles, including the invasion of Kursk)
3) Britain and France, through Ukraine (Storm Shadow, drones, heavy armor, soldiers)
4) Germany, through Ukraine (German tanks and lots of German soldiers again rolled into Kursk)
5) Poland, through Ukraine (artillery, drones, lots of soldiers)
6) Czechia, through Ukraine (MLRS into Belgorod, manned by Czech military)
7) Finland, directly from Finland itself (drones towards Murmansk and Arkhangelsk)
8) The Baltics, directly (drones into Leningrad, Pskov, Tver)
9) Kazakhstan (the drones that fly into Orenburg and further north into the Urals regions come from there)
10) Almost certainly Azerbaijan too (there were lots of sudden appearances of large drones in Dagestan, and the other Northern Caucasus Russian regions)
11) Multiple ships were sunk out of theater by NATO, in the Baltics and in the Mediterranean.
None of these have been punished properly for it, not even the Ukrainians, even though there is a war with them.
Who ever envisioned that in 2021? Nobody, everyone assumed that whoever attacked Russia would be crushed immediately. But Putin has refused to fight back, and here are the results. Expect it to get much worse — this absurd “restraint” is the reason the Tomahawks are coming, there is talk now of a naval blockade while the attacks from Kazakhstan are getting more and more frequent, right into the most strategically sensitive for Russia regions, and there is open talk now of “Ukrainian” attacks using ship-launched drones in the Far East.
Which brings us to the question how can deterrence be reestablished when it has been so catastrophically lost?
I see no way other than nuking whole countries out of existence. Nothing else will suffice. It’s not that I wish for it, but that is what the cold hard logic dictates.
Run the decision tree and you will see.
What happens if, say, Russia was to admit publicly that Finland has been launching drones towards Murmansk (which it was directly caught doing already more than a year ago)?
Well, it would have to strike Finland, otherwise the admission followed by no kinetic attack just invites a lot more strikes on you.
But if those strikes are conventional what happens?
What happens is that, because of how little explosives a conventional missile carries, and how large, dispersed, and fortified modern armies are, it won’t achieve anything but to spark the same kind of war you see in Ukraine. Finland, likely with the participation of all of NATO, will be firing all sorts of stuff towards the Russian northwestern regions, Russia will be striking back, but it won’t be able to take Finland out in any way, so at best you have an endless war, which by default is a loss for you, because what you are looking for is peace so that you can develop your own country, not perpetual destructive war. Decapitation won’t work against a place like Finland either, because the reality is that most people in Finland are unrepentant Nazis who have been waiting for the opportunity to exact revenge on Russia for many decades (never mind they started it back then too), so if you take leadership out, the same lunatics will replace it.
Conventional strikes are thus not a solution to anything.
Then we move to the second possibility, which is some combination of demonstrative and counterforce tactical nuclear strikes, i.e. take out all Finnish military infrastructure while sparing the cities. This will also only cause more trouble while not really solving anything. First, a lot of military infrastructure is embedded in cities. Second, you take out the military with nukes, but Finland is in NATO, so it will be crying for retaliation to high heaven for the rest of eternity, and that will put serious pressure on NATO to strike back. Third, if Finland still exists after such strikes, what will happen in the medium to long term is that Finland will get its own nukes (it has the capacity to do it if it decides so, and it will be helped with, now that it has become another kamikaze country) and likely fire back at some point.
So that doesn’t work either.
Third option — nuke everything for total erasure, move in with ground forces and occupy the land. This does solve the problems, as after that there is no Finland left to ask for retaliation, or to build its own nukes later, while once you have done that to someone, nobody else will dare fire back at all.
The same logic applies to other countries.
It is a monstrous thing to do, and it should not have come to this, but it did come to it thanks to Putin allowing deterrence to be lost to such an extent.
Had he taken Zelensky and co. out the moment the first shell flew across the pre-war border with a conventional missile strike, and had he blocked Western weapon supplies with kinetic action, escalation would have been nipped in the bud. But he didn’t do it (for reasons too long to revisit yet again here), so here we are.
This is the fine work of the “greatest statesman of the 21st century”…
The former head of the Wagner Group already raised some of these issues.
He’s no longer around.
Too many players all around getting something for themselves by stretching this out.
Just curious. Could you provide your list of greatest statesmen of the 21st century, without the “”? Top 5, or so.
“nuke everything for total erasure, move in with ground forces and occupy the land”
Nobody is occupying Chernobyl for a reason. Why would Russia send its troops to a radioactive Finland to get radiation sickness? Also, it is not a given that there would be any Russian troops at all once the nukes start flying. According to Scott Ritter, if I understand it correctly, one nuke flies, within a couple of hours all nukes fly. End of mankind.
End of mankind doesn’t sound that bad, once you learn to stop worrying and love the bomb.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1KvgtEnABY
That’s not very sensible. Serious men do not threaten. They try and prevent others from doing something stupid by being conciliatory and ever so reasonable, and that is the face they will present to the world.
So Russia will keep on attriting the yukkies, take out the Tomahawks and the operatives, and is more likely to retaliate by taking out US bases, local weapons manufacturing and storage sites, and places of symbolic importance in Europe, most likely in Germany, the UK, Romania and Poland. Unfortunately President Putin will allow Estonia to remain an irritant, but he could well take a healthy pop at Finland, a country which I find particularly irritating even when I am in a good mood.
It will be devastating to the West, possibly leading to the collapse of many governments – perhaps including that of President Trump as he is dragged through impeachment hearings in a straightjacket and a gag because the Congress is changing shape and no one wants a loon in charge in such delicate times – and draw a close to the existence of the EU as a quasi-state and the NATO as NATO.
To the rest of the world it will be seen as a moderate and rational response to an immoderate, profoundly stupid challenge, doing only what is absolutely necessary and no more – at that point in time. President Putin’s strategy will remain intact, he will satisfy the majority of his critics, and he will carry the Global South with him and, more importantly, give us all hope for a better world.
The EU has 29 large scale LNG facilities which each cost between $5 billion and $10 billion. Russia has more than 29 Oreshniks.
I don’t think that they would need to do that. The leadership of the EU is destroying the European nations all by themselves. They are de-industrializing the countries, racking up debts of hundreds of billions of dollars, cutting back on pensions, holidays, education & infrastructure and all for the purpose of what? To save Zelenski. Give another 20 years and the EU leadership will have successfully turned Europe into a pastoral society.
The Oreshniks are meaningless unless they have about 40,000 of them if the idea is to expand the war beyond the Ukraine.
As Brian Berledick says Russia, was using 4000 missiles per year and the Ukraine is still operating.
If you expand the war to 3 – 4 times the area of Ukraine you better be ready.
On the bright side, somebody worked out that NATO only had enough aerial defenses to defend about 5% of their territory. That was a few years ago but since then a lot of that gear has been sent to the Ukraine only to be burnt. So it is still Open Skies over NATO.
NATO would defend their territory worse than Ukraine does. They can not even deal with occasional (stray) drones. I can only imagine chaos of real missiles incoming. Instant tactical diaper overload. They are lucky that Houthis don’t have the reach.
As Bloomberg is saying that Russia took out 60% of Ukraine’s gas production with one strike (yesterday), it seems quite obvious that Russia is still treating Ukraine like it’s smaller brother refusing to learn a lesson, not a sworn enemy.
As in, Ukraine has not been turned into a desolate wasteland because Kremlin does not will this. At least not for now.
With NATO, I doubt they would be equally considerate.
That statement doesn’t sound right. They have been hitting gas production for a year now. Lots and lots of strikes. So how come they knocked out 60% with a single one yesterday but for a year they did little damage? And if that is true, what does that tell us about the targeting during that year?
Nothing.
Here is mention of those strikes-
‘Russian strikes have destroyed more than half of Ukraine’s gas production, forcing Kiev to seek over $2 billion in emergency imports to prevent a winter energy crisis, Bloomberg reported on Thursday.
Kiev told its Western backers this week that a Russian missile strike on the regions of Kharkov and Poltava on October 3 destroyed around 60% of the country’s gas production capacity, the outlet wrote, citing anonymous sources.’
https://www.rt.com/business/626140-ukraine-gas-emergency-bloomberg/
The Oreshnik is in fact precisely how you take care of Europe.
100 Oreshniks times 6×6 warheads means 3600 warheads. Depending on how far the Soviet/Russian program got with miniaturization, each of those might be 50-100 kt. That is sufficient.
That will be enough to eliminate Europe. Provided everything has actually already been deployed properly, of course, which is a big doubt given that it does appear they only revived that program after the SMO started. Even though the US pulled out of the INF treaty way back in 2017 while arming Ukraine to the teeth in the years after that, i.e. Russia should have been pumping out intermediate-range ballistics and nuclear warheads for them at Soviet rates in the years before the SMO, because it was obvious where things are headed, but in the real timeline it didn’t make a single one despite the INF treaty being canceled by the enemy…
“Russia should have been pumping out intermediate-range ballistics and nuclear warheads for them at Soviet rates in the years before the SMO”
Maybe they were/are?? They need to keep up with Obomba’s nuclear improvement program in the US.
Ukraine is operating for two reasons:
1) It isn’t Ukraine that is the enemy, Ukraine is just the forward position. The actual rear is in Europe and the US, and not a single missile has flown there. So yeah, of course the enemy hasn’t been defeated when it is forbidden to strike at it even once.
2) There has been a political veto from the Kremlin on striking anything that would actually take it out. And I don’t think it is 4000 missiles per year, it maybe gets to that if you count the Tornado-S strikes.
But for the SMO as a whole and counting Iskanders, Kh-101s and Kalibrs and other missiles with warheads around 500 kg and over, it is over 4,000. And that would have been enough to take Ukraine out if it was blocked from Western supplies and if what had to be hit was actually hit. Neither of those things were done.
Watch how the US will do it to Venezuela. Venezuela is comparable in size even if it doesn’t have the Soviet industrial legacy.
My understanding of why the Russians object so strongly to Tomahawks being deployed is not their range, or the fact that they are firmly in bed with the US to provide mapping and targeting information, but the fact that they are capable of carrying nuclear warheads. If you see a sortie of Tomahawk cruise missiles coming across your border, what are you to think? The safest assumption (!) is to assume that a nuclear exchange with the US has begun, and react accordingly. The other possibility is to cross your fingers and wait for them to hit their targets and see what happens. Not a very appetizing set of choices.
Re Ukraine war briefing: Analysts flag Kremlin scare campaign against use of Tomahawks The Guardian.
Intro in bold: Ukrainian counteroffensive causing heavy losses for Russia. What we know on day 1,324
– well, this is based on a claim by Zelensky and backed by analysis from the Kagan family Institute for the Study of War.
Both the above have zero objective credibility. The POW and dead body swaps are embarrassingly one-sided in terms of numbers. Compounded by Zelensky’s reluctance to accept KIA and MIA numbers to avoid payouts to the families of such. He can’t keep the grift going if he has to share his loot with those outside his own corrupt circle.
Re: Gaza ceasefire
A risk, he says. Sigh.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYQCb3qrBpo
“Flounder … you effed up, you trusted us!”
Or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSYV-nEE300
The genocidal psychopaths in the West laughing at them
IMO they are well aware Trump/Israel are likely to violate the agreement again. Their calculation seems to be that holding on to the POWs further doesn’t bring much, simply because Israel with the Hannibal directive doesn’t care about enough to make any compromise. But if/when the genocide is restarted again, Israel’s standing will take damage and for its western protectors it will be even more difficult to prop it up. The western support seems to be the key, with it Israel can limp along for years, without it they are finished.
“New Zealand oceans warming 34% faster than global average, putting homes and industry at risk, report finds”
Now this article has me wondering. Peter Thiel and a lot of his rich buddies have prepared bolt holes in New Zealand for themselves for when people come for them. But we know how the wealthy always choose coastal homes such as Zuckerberg did in Hawaii. So it would be irony upon irony if such people caused weather chaos through all their energy-hungry data centers, fled to New Zealand when the bill came due, only to find their coastal homes there being ravaged due to weather chaos.
We can only hope.
I’ve been wanting them to stay with the private island fixation…if for no other reason they could hopefully be content with setting up their fantasy worlds in those places (full of all the surveillance they need too) and leaving the rest of us
Thiel gave up on NZ after their strong Covid response. I believe he has his eyes on Greenland still, despite it dropping from the news cycle.
Re Gold as ‘debasement trade’ doesn’t add up
This FT article is actually worth reading, although the title should be “Gold, we haven’t got a clue – A summary”.
Very weak arguments against the debasement trade here and in fact 2/3 of the way down it actually says it might be. I’ve yet to find anyone that can explain currency markets to me, and I have always assumed it is heavily controlled by Central banks and that the desire of China to keep their currency low allows this whole unstable thing to keep going.
Looking at that and the Arnaud B. post…
Just a reminder: this is all time highs for everything in the everything asset bubble.
All the speculation and gambling on the rise like it’s never been.
We’re well beyond “risk” into terrain of vast “uncertainty”, in fact a world of “unknown unknowns”.
Per up at the top, gold is what passes for Plan B these days.
Money, as such, is a social construct: gold may still be there and possibly accessible after the social construct blows apart.
I don’t follow California politics all that closely, but my impression of Katie Porter has been that she’s a decent politician with the interest of the people at heart, at least more so than the other hair mannequins on offer like Newsom. I was also under the impression that the Democrats were going to show their “fightin’ for” bona fides by cursing up a blue streak to show their toughness and connection with the common people.
Apparently that latter bit is only appropriate for absolute phonies trying to p0wn the rubes, because when Katie Porter recently expressed a little frustration, the pile on from both sides began.
Knives out for Katie – https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/08/katie-porter-viral-videos-campaign-disaster-00599452
And do note that not only is Politico reporting on this story, they also started the pile on by releasing the video in the first place. One wonders which other candidate put them up to it, what the price was, and who made the decision to make it go viral?
My sentiments as well. I’m old enough to remember enjoying Ms Porter grilling Jamie Dimon on corporate pay disparities back in 2019. She made some enemies doing this sort of thing.
Adam Schiff spent some money to keep Porter off the CA US Senate ballot.
Democrat Schiff spent 10 million dollars promoting the US senate primary candidacy of former baseball player Republican Steve Garvey to keep Porter off the ballot.
That was Democratic campaign money supporting a Republican because he would be easier to beat than Porter.
This helped ensure Schiff faced Garvey and not Porter in the general election.
And CA elected Schiff in the general.
After watching Schiff over the years (Russia, Russia, Russia), his fear of Porter’s electability is an endorsement of Porter for me.
Berating a staffer, who should have known better, is hardly a disqualification. But someone saved the video rather than deleting it, so Porter has enemies.
Not only that, but when Feinstein was on the wane, I believe it was Newsom who promised to appoint a black woman to finish up her term. But instead of nominating Barbara Lee, the long serving Congresswoman with more integrity than the rest of them put together (yes, low bar, I know), he appointed someone noone ever heard of and whose actual California residency was in question. This was clearly done to make sure Lee wouldn’t have any perceived advantage as an incumbent for the new election.
They managed to get the crooked guy in there and Schiff is now a senator. Schiff’s shifty moves stopped Lee along with Porter. Trust women they tell us. We need more racial diversity they tell us. But every single time there is a woman or person of color with some actual integrity who threatens to get elected, the party sends out the full court press against them. Why anybody believes a word the Democrat party says about identity politics is beyond me because they have proven time and time again that it’s nothing but lip service.
On the bright side, Schiff is more indictable!
She was a craptastic and typical D team.
https://jacobin.com/2023/10/laphonza-butler-airbnb-uber-lobbying
Solar.
The issue in Spain or anywhere with enough solar and wind to a lesser degree is you do need grid stabilization.
This comes in a few forms. For inverters ( which take the solar/sun and make it into what goes into the grid) there are two variants. Grid forming and grid support. Grid forming means it acts just like a generator, but even faster. If it sees the grid frequency start to drop or rise or voltage or Power factor or a few other things happen instantly adds or subtracts to keep things exactly where they need to be. These have been out for at least 5 if not 10 yrs. And older inverters can be retrofitted. Grid support inverters have been out for almost 15 yrs and they can’t do everything the grid forming ones can but close. Again, upgradable.
The other option is battery/inverter grid support. These are not necessarily peaker plants but are designed to be able to back up the grid instantly which normal peaker plants such as gas can’t do.
All of what Spain needs to keep its high penetration of renewables working correctly has been available for 10-15 yrs. Why it’s not been installed or upgraded is the question.The issue is not solar, wind, batteries.
All we have to look at is Texas a few years ago, they almost completely went down which had nothing to do with solar and wind as there was almost zero of each.
>>>he issue in Spain or anywhere with enough solar and wind to a lesser degree is you do need grid stabilization.
In the USA, demand for electricity does not neatly overlap with wind-solar time-of-day supply.
Even at 3am local time, the needs of first-world life generates an enormous base rate of power needs. Depending on the time of year (weather, HVAC use), 3pm local time is only ~15% to ~25% greater demand. that 15-25 percentage points = all the discretionary power needs for factories, stores, offices, etc.
I am not sure if the managers are doing it in the correct way, but the government is financing a few large storage projects urgently. I guess these won’t be ready until next spring.
If the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. I am shocked that people are still shocked by the “shoot first ask questions later” approach that USA had since the Old Wild West.
Private park in North Carolina. Well I guess even the Lost Cause monuments deserve a place far out into the country, and not out front of a county seat or central square. Since it’s my native state I can add some criticism, why not just store them in a central warehouse far away from prying eyes or potential vandalism? I’m not a historian by any stretch but American history is a fascinating subject; and therefore I am perhaps too realistic on the root causes that led to southern states that seceded from the Union.
Stone Mountain in the suburbs of Georgia still features a few Confederate leaders, and most likely it will be there until the end of time. Much like another Georgia iconic staple, Waffle House.
When my parents were in Hungary they took me to a park where huge numbers Soviet era monuments to Marx, Stalin, etc. had been gathered together. I thought that was a good approach–don’t try to erase history, but also don’t leave the propaganda monuments dominating every public park. Put them all in one place and then you can have a discussion about what they represent.
The difference is Marx and Stalin deserve places of honor, unlike confederate scum.
Stalin deserving of a statue yes….for what he accomplished against people of his own, and others when it comes to acts and actions of mass genocide. Let alone barricading half of conquered Germany and 100% of the other conquered states behind Soviet Union policies.
What a world it was then.
Zhukov did say that you will never forgive them for defeating Nazism. Since the same war is back on the program, you have a unique chance to do better than your grandfathers. Johnny get your gun.
What a world it was then, it is now, though Nazis playing the victims is even more grotesque than then. You forgot to mention that evil Ruskies raped every German woman, man, child, and dog, twice. And stole all the toilets, too.
History is complicated by the very human leaders we tend to place on a high pedestal. I’ve seen this very closely in tight windows of small, rural churches where the people were unwittingly divided before they knew what happened.
An above allusion that confederate leaders were scum is an opinion. I have the opinion that in order to defeat Germany at last, the Allied powers had to align their common interest and set aside any future and likely conflicted points of interest. The means to ending WW2 was worth it.
Can I just support my opinion on Stalin by stating observable facts of history. Sweet holy cr*p on a cracker. I’m too old to viable option for military action. A great uncle was indeed in a Japanese POW camp of the worst kind for 40+ months and survived to tell it. I doubt that I would actually make it myself.
https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2010/09/naimark-stalin-genocide-092310
Is that link supposed to make others drink your Kool-Aid?
In the border state city where my parents are buried, Union and Confederate statues are displayed in the cemetery.
Make a day of it. Stone Mountain, then on to Denton, NC for more antiheroes, and finish it off with a drive over to Petersberg, KY to check out the Creation Museum. Lots of Waffle Houses along the way. Cool!
Taibbi has an excellent article out today cutting through all the propaganda and detailing Comey’s conspiracy to manufacture a reason to go after Trump – https://www.racket.news/p/james-comey-was-sure-he-was-above
Turley on the chances of making any charges stick – https://jonathanturley.org/2025/10/09/comeys-hail-mary-play-the-former-fbi-director-will-reportedly-raise-three-threshold-challenges-to-his-criminal-charges/
Not surprisingly, the incompetence of the Trump administration leaves room for Comey to weasel out.
“In a Private Park in North Carolina, Confederate Statues Are Rising Again”
I always thought of the push to remove those statues as part of Cancel Culture. Well it was never going to work and all that is happening is that statues are finding new homes on private property. Here it is 160 years after the end of the US Civil War and I do not think that people have yet to come to terms with this war and with lots of groups wanting to put their own spin on history such as the “Lost Cause” do not help. That fact that more Americans died in the Civil war than every other war America has fought combined means that you cannot ignore it. The efforts that the Union did in defeating the Confederacy also should be remembered and you cannot do that by trying to cancel a whole era. But the whole thing has become so partisan that any sort of reconciliation will be extremely difficult.
When I was just a kid, a long time ago, I heard the phrase “iskabibbiloo and the south shall rise again. that was in California not Georgia. Racism was more in the open in the 50’s. People wore it on their sleeve. Some cultures are worthy of cancel. For the most part the celebration of the confederacy didn’t begin until the 1920’s. The statues were a project of a group at that time. Canceling the culture of slavery is not to be confused with ignoring the history of the civil war.
I still live in California and in this rebel part of the state we see lots of stars and bars displayed. Much of the time accompanied with the National Socialist flag. This is a culture of prejudice and exclusion that transcends american history. It is a culture that used to be of the embittered Democratic south that was co-opted by the Republican party to harness that hate. It is not so much partisan as a vote capture strategy. The south has a genuine valid culture. It is a shame that it must also carry the legacy of slavery
“Colombian president says US military struck Colombian boat, killed his citizens”
Relations aren’t good with Colombia right now so you wonder if this was the Trump regime giving Columbia a message in their own way. Even the fisherman in next-door Trinidad are fearful of taking their boats out lest they be blown up by a US missile. I can only assume that it is also the same with small aircraft as they would be fearful of being shot out of the sky without warning with Trump saying afterwards that that plane was carrying drugs, m’kay. Declaring whole regions as being free-fire zones does not strike me as a good idea.
I think the other story on Columbia is much more important: Colombia: President Petro Denounces ‘Political Coup’ Following Suspension of Electoral Consultation (+Cepeda)
“In a judicial twist that has shaken the Colombian political landscape, the Bogotá Superior Court on Tuesday suspended the internal consultation of the Historic Pact, the governing coalition of President Gustavo Petro. The decision, which the president described as a “premeditated political coup against democracy,” throws the selection of the leftist presidential candidate, the left primaries, for 2026 into limbo—potentially forcing the coalition’s member parties to run separately in the elections unless the referendum is reactivated.”
Removing Petro’s leftist coalition from power would bring in the kind of government that would work with the United States against Venezuela to consolidate US control of their oil resources.
“Rehypothecation is making me late.” (Apologies to Carly Simon)
To what extent is the circular AI corporate cross investment a form of rehypothecation?
Regarding the article: “Sunday Shows on NBC, ABC and CNN Have Not Featured a Single Palestinian Guest In These Times”, I wonder how many times they have had a Russian guest over the last few years??
SAAS was that shiny subscription object foisted on the world a few years ago. Maybe you subscribe to keep those toner cartridges and software updates coming, for example, like an IV drip. Just don’t risk life and limb by canceling.
Little recognized was the proto version from a different business.
NAAS, news as a service. Subscribe through your
doctorhealthcare provider. They handle the back office and ad campaign buys. /s? Probably not.This is extremely normal for US mainstream news, and has been studied extensively in other areas. If you look at the periods leading up to US invasions of every country under the sun, commentators appearing on the news and opinion programs are virtually 100% pro war.
Being able to set the limits of the Overton window are one of the major powers of owning the printing press (or the airwaves).
“more and more like home mortgage securitization at the peak of the housing bubble with its overlapping series of capital conveyor belts.” pic.twitter.com/ar9NiVUaXp
Look at that pic and have to say, “Dudes… really?!?!”
Marco Rubio to join Paris conference on Gaza ‘post-war’ plans – The Cradle
Seeing something called a “Paris conference” and remembering that one of the best known eventually led to more big war.
Or continuing war – Vietnam.
AI slop
What the Arrival of A.I.-Fabricated Video Means for Us (NY Times via archive.ph)
And
OpenAI’s Sora hit 1 million downloads in less than five days (CNBC)
A dangerously acceleration of AI trash, with serious social and legal implications for anyone targeted maliciously.
Seriously, this is the best they’ve got? Stupid time-wasters at best, accessories to enable falsification of evidence, criminal acts, and/or defamation at worst. A fraudster’s paradise … shall we call it “Fraudtopia?”
Beam me up, Scottie, I’ve seen enough of this planet to conclude that there are no signs of life!
The state is going to have them whether you like it or not.
Robin William’s daughter has had to ask people to stop sending these AI generated videos of her late father as she finds them disgusting.
I think we have seen this movie before. What happens next is:
(1) Trump sets a signing date about 2 weeks in the future.
(2) All the leaders that Israel hates gather at the signing site the day before the signing.
(3) Israel bombs the sh*t out of the site that evening, killing everybody.
(4) Trump posts on Truth Social that he is the “peace president.”
One could almost expect that’s the plan: while it may not take precisely that form, I’d wager that Hamas is signing on to this precisely with the expectation that US-Israel will unilaterally tear up the agreement in a particularly ghoulish manner soon. Hamas cannot “defeat” Israel, as in force it to accept Palestine as an independent entity. Palestine needs international support, if only from the popular sentiments. Israel (and US) are incapable of holding on to an agreement of any kind without twisting it around (or flagrantly violate it) for any extended length of time.
I expect the Insurrection act to be invoked well before Christmas and it will be interesting to watch how “Conservatives” react to the temporary suspension of the Second Amendment along with the rest of the “Bill of Liberties”.
Just temporary, until the State of Emergency passes.
It’s for the Children.
I don’t think the Insurrection Act allows “suspension of the Bill of Liberties” but would welcome a cite to show I’m wrong. Brennan Center analysis seems to support my thinking.
From For older Americans, the cost of poverty is 9 years of life, study finds
And keep in mind, wealthier retirees aren’t going to need to work, and certainly won’t be working service level jobs as essential workers during the early stages of a Pandemic, so how much wider is this gap because Biden’s Pandemic Policy murdered seniors?
And remember when Biden and the Democrats finally let Medicare negotiate a few drug prices, and the start date was delayed by multiple years? How many seniors died because of that?
Thanks Democrats!
It appears we will soon find out how well the population management tools recently perfected in Gaza will work in the Land of the Free.
It’s been my experience that when you fuck around with a highly complex tightly coupled dynamic system that the results are not predictable.
AI might have changed that…
I’ll ask Sam Altman the next time we do brunch.
Different geography, history, and demographics than Gaza. The Westward expansion was already completed in the USA, the expansion happening in the Mid-East isn’t near its final stage.
An argument can be made that the tools were “perfected’ here.
A Mystery C.E.O. and Billions in Sales: Is China Buying Banned Nvidia Chips? (NY Times via archive.ph)
Looks like Trump is getting punked.
Trump has already announced an expedition to go pollute it.
His son-in-law will build a riviera there.
been busier than i like to be all day(driving miss daisy, and all(sigh)…eyes hurt from the rollin, and tongue from the chewin)
but i finally got around to reading this, which was either in links or in a comment or embedded in one of the articles:https://www.peoplesline.org/p/why-does-curtis-yarvin-think-he-is?
ive been paying a portion of my awareness to Moldbug for years and years…namely, because various candidates for the antichristos take him seriously.
and like Carl sez, its merely purple prose and a lot of frothy, flowery(as in fleur de mal) and often contradictory, if not just wrong…historicity and philosophising.
bafflegab immediately came to mind when i first started reading him.
all that said…some very powerful people take him seriously,lol.
(“thy hand, Great Anarch, lets the curtain fall!…”)
so in spite of his insufferable vomitus of half-baked nonsense, we should attempt to understand him…because he’s shaping up to be the unwitting and by default architect of the Brave New World we’re being corralled into.
and that scares the shit out of me(and yes, because of That Guy, ive actually read Hoppe and De Maistre)
re: “ive been paying a portion of my awareness to Moldbug for years and years…namely, because various candidates for the antichristos take him seriously.
and like Carl sez, its merely purple prose and a lot of frothy, flowery(as in fleur de mal) and often contradictory, if not just wrong…historicity and philosophising.”
What’s the saying? All cults have their narrative? / ;)
I’ve also spent time on Moldbug and agree it’s nonsense. Vibes like a demented undergraduate who is angry no-one will have sex with him.
I suspect he’s popular among Thielites for the same reason Chicago School economics was popular among rich people – the conclusions suit them.
The Cathedral concept fits with Thiel’s pre-existing hatred of liberal institutions especially universities.
Damaged little boys turn out like this. They have something (empathy?) missing. They wrap their trauma and resentment responses in fancy-words and it gets them to a place where the ego feels safe. To keep feeling safe they try to apply their nonsense to the world. They are, in the true sense, mentally ill.
Re: AI workslop
Deloitte was caught using AI in $290,000 report to help the Australian government crack down on welfare
https://fortune.com/2025/10/07/deloitte-ai-australia-government-report-hallucinations-technology-290000-refund/
post car from wilderness bar:
drove miss daisy, today, as it were.. so my eyes hurt from the rollin, my tongue is raw from the bitin, and my mind is actually more exhausted than my body, fro steering conversation into safe and anodyne regions that would not elicit an rage event.
so im drinkin beer, and listening to crickets(and an apparently orphaned kitten), and waiting on moonrise, whereupon, i’ll have a hogleg…or part of one…and watch dear Luna rise over that part of Mason Mountain.
and i just remembered that i got some andouille out of the deal,lol.
so im goin to hunt for red beans, to soak, and make jambalaya manana
learned how to do that from those Creole people i lived with and worked for, long ago, outside of either New Iberia, or Evangeline….cant remember(we drank like fish,lol)
they had a restaurant, and a compound, where they let me park my van.
great big family.(i think it was more likely Evangeline)
couldnt understand a word they said when they got to rollin on the rum, and all.
good folks, tho.
taught me a lot.
Stupidest timeline:
Norway braces for Trump’s reaction if he does not win Nobel peace prize
I had an unpredictable narcissist father and this rings bells.
“Family braces for Daddy’s reaction if fragile ego is not adequately fed”
They should put out a few decoy fishing boats so that angry Daddy could let some steam off, and then give him special one-of-a-kind participation trophy, made of the highest quality 24 Karat Gold, that would fit right in the Oval Office.
.
YouGov MRP shows a Reform UK government a near-certainty if an election were held tomorrow
YouGov’s second MRP since the 2024 general election shows Reform UK within touching distance of winning a parliamentary majority. Nonetheless, their seat total in a hypothetical election would almost certainly be enough to see them take the reins of government.
The central projection of our latest model shows Reform UK would win 311 seats were an election held tomorrow, according to YouGov’s industry-leading MRP model run on a sample of 13,000 voters.
The vast majority of the additional Reform UK gains have come at the expense of Labour, who we now expect would win just 144 seats if an election were happening right now. That’s a drop of 34 seats on our June model, and a loss of 267 relative to the 2024 election result.
In terms of vote shares, Reform UK are up one point versus June to 27% of the national vote, Labour are down two on 21%, the Conservatives down one on 17%, the Liberal Democrats are static on 15%, as are the Greens on 11%.
We would expect the Conservatives – the current official opposition – to win only 68 seats at the very maximum, with the Liberal Democrats projected to win no fewer than 65 seats and potentially as many as 86.
in a “news you can use” style…
if you are a zoom user be aware that all the “AI Companion” settings are ON by default. No warning for us either.
you cant change them from the app itself, you need to go to the web based settings and there is an “AI Companion” tab.
I know I don’t always agree with the opinions on AI tech here, but I DO agree around enshittification. and I can’t stand UI dark patterns like this where tech companies decide what is in my best interest.
Something else I’ve been seeing in the last month, after I close the zoom program, it is still running in the background, comsuming resources, memory, then (the first few times) the swap space, until by the end of the day it gets found out. Now I have to kill the process each time I close zoom. Anybody else concur?